• Feature Name: leadership-council
• Start Date: 2022-08-01
• RFC PR: rust-lang/rfcs#3392
• Rust Issue: N/A

Summary

This RFC establishes a Leadership Council as the successor of the core team¹ and the new governance structure through which Rust Project members collectively confer the authority² to ensure successful operation of the Project. The Leadership Council delegates much of this authority to teams (which includes subteams, working groups, etc.³) who autonomously make decisions concerning their purviews. However, the Council retains some decision-making authority, outlined and delimited by this RFC.

The Council will be composed of representatives delegated to the Council from each top-level team.

The Council is charged with the success of the Rust Project as a whole. The Council will identify work that needs to be done but does not yet have a clear owner, create new teams to accomplish this work, hold existing teams accountable for the work in their purview, and coordinate and adjust the organizational structure of Project teams.

Outline

• Reference materials
• Motivation
• Duties, expectations, and constraints on the Council
• Structure of the Council
  • Top-level teams
    • Initial list of top-level teams
    • The “launching pad” top-level team
    • Removing top-level teams
  • Alternates and forgoing representation
  • Term limits
  • Limits on representatives from a single company/entity
  • Candidate criteria
  • Relationship to the core team
  • Relationship to the Rust Foundation
• The Council’s decision-making process
  • Operational vs policy decisions
  • Repetition and exceptions
  • The consent decision-making process
    • Approval criteria
  • Modifying and tuning the decision-making process
  • Agenda and backlog
  • Deadlock resolution
  • Feedback and evaluation
• Transparency and oversight for decision making
  • Decisions that the Council may make internally
  • Decisions that the Council must necessarily make privately
  • Decisions that the Council must make via public proposal
  • Conflicts of interest
  • Determining and changing team purviews
• Mechanisms for oversight and accountability
  • Ensuring the Council is accountable
  • Ensuring Council representatives are accountable
  • Ensuring teams are accountable
• Moderation, disagreements, and conflicts
  • Disagreements among teams
  • Conflicts involving teams or Project members
  • Contingent moderators
  • Moderation team policies and procedures
  • Audits
  • Last-resort accountability
  • Moderation actions involving Project members
  • Conflicts involving Council representatives
  • Conflicts involving moderation team members
• Ratification of this RFC
• Footnotes

Reference materials

To reduce the size of this RFC, non-binding reference materials appear in separate documents:

• Full motivation
  • Further research into the needs of Project-wide governance (Inside Rust blog post)
• Non-goals of this RFC
• Rationale and alternatives
• Recommendations for initial work of the Council

Motivation

The Rust project consists of hundreds of globally distributed people, organized into teams with various purviews. However, a great deal of work falls outside the purview of any established team, and still needs to get done.

Historically, the core team both identified and prioritized important work that fell outside of team purviews, and also attempted to do that work itself. However, putting both of those activities in the same team has not scaled and has led to burnout.

The Leadership Council established by this RFC focuses on identifying and prioritizing work outside of team purviews. The Council primarily delegates that work, rather than doing that work itself. The Council can also serve as a coordination, organization, and accountability body between teams, such as for cross-team efforts, roadmaps, and the long-term success of the Project.

This RFC also establishes mechanisms for oversight and accountability between the Council as a whole, individual Council members, the moderation team, the Project teams, and Project members.

Duties, expectations, and constraints on the Council

At a high-level, the Council is only in charge of the following duties:

• Identifying, prioritizing, and tracking work that goes undone due to lack of clear ownership (and not due to the owners’ explicit de-prioritization, placement in a backlog, etc.).
• Delegating this work, potentially establishing new (and possibly temporary) teams to own this work.
• Making decisions on urgent matters that do not have a clear owner.
  • This should only be done in exceptional circumstances where the decision cannot be delegated either to existing teams or to newly created ones.
• Coordinating Project-wide changes to teams, structures, or processes.
• Ensuring top-level teams are accountable to their purviews, to other teams, and to the Project.
• Ensuring where possible that teams have the people and resources they need to accomplish their work.
• Establishing the official position, opinion, or will of the Rust Project as a whole.
  • This helps reduce the need for Project-wide coordination, especially when a long public polling and consensus-building process is not practical - for example, when communicating with third parties who require some understanding of what the Rust Project as a whole “wants”.

In addition to these duties, the Council has additional expectations and constraints, to help determine if the Council is functioning properly:

• Delegate work: The Council should not take on work beyond what this RFC explicitly assigns to it; it must delegate to existing or new teams distinct from the Council. Such teams may include Council representatives, but such membership is not part of the duties of a Council representative.
• Ensure the Project runs smoothly in the long term: The Council should ensure that non-urgent Project management work is prioritized and completed with enough regularity that the Project does not accumulate organizational debt.
• Be Accountable: As the Council wields broad power, the Council and Council representatives must be accountable for their actions. They should listen to others’ feedback, and actively reflect on whether they continue to meet the duties and expectations of the position they hold.
• Be representational: Council representatives should not only represent the breadth of Project concerns but also the diversity of the Rust community in as many aspects as possible (demographics, technical background, etc).
• Share burden: All Council representatives must share burden of Council duties.
• Respect others’ purviews: The Council must respect the purviews delegated to teams. The Council should consult with and work together with teams on solutions to issues, and should almost never make decisions that go against the wishes of any given team.
• Act in good faith: Council representatives should make decisions in the best interest of the Rust Project as a whole even if those decisions come into conflict with their individual teams, their employers, or other outside interests.
• Be transparent: While not all decisions (or all aspects of a decision) can be made public, the Council should be as open and transparent about their decision-making as possible. The Council should also ensure the organizational structure of the Project is clear and transparent.
• Respect privacy: The Council must never compromise personal or confidential information for the sake of transparency, including adjacent information that could unintentionally disclose privileged information.
• Foster a healthy working environment: The Council representatives should all feel satisfied with the amount and nature of their contribution. They should not feel that their presence on the Council is merely out of obligation but rather because they are actively participating in a meaningful way.
• Evolve: The Council is expected to evolve over time to meet the evolving needs of teams, the Project, and the community.

Council representatives, moderation team members, and other Project members serve as examples for those around them and the broader community. All of these roles represent positions of responsibility and leadership; their actions carry weight and can exert great force within the community, and should be wielded with due care. People choosing to serve in these roles should thus recognize that those around them will hold them to a correspondingly high standard.

Structure of the Council

The Council consists of a set of team representatives, each representing one top-level team and its subteams.

Each top-level team designates exactly one representative, by a process of their choice.

Any member of the top-level team or a member of any of their subteams is eligible to be the representative. Teams should provide members of their subteams with an opportunity for input and feedback on potential candidates.

Each representative represents at most one top-level team, even if they’re also a member of other teams. The primary responsibility of representing any Rust team falls to the representative of the top-level team they fall under.⁴

All teams in the Rust Project must ultimately fall under at least one top-level team. For teams that do not currently have a parent team, this RFC establishes the “launching pad” team as a temporary home. This ensures that all teams have representation on the Council.

Top-level teams

The Council establishes top-level teams via public policy decisions. In general, top-level teams should meet the following criteria:

• Have a purview that is foundational to the Rust Project
• Be the ultimate decision-makers on all aspects of that purview
• Have a purview that not is a subset of another team’s purview (that is, it must not be a subteam or similar governance structure)
• Have an open-ended purview that’s expected to continue indefinitely
• Be a currently active part of the Rust Project

There must be between 4 and 9 top-level teams (inclusive), preferably between 5 and 8. This number balances the desire for a diverse and relatively shallow structure while still being practical for productive conversation and consent.⁵

When the Council creates a new top-level team, that team then designates a Council representative.⁶ When creating a new top-level team, the Council must provide justification for why it should not be a subteam or other governance structure.

Initial list of top-level teams

The initial list of top-level teams is formed from all teams listed on the rust-lang.org website’s top-level governance section (besides core and alumni) at the time of initial publication of this RFC, plus the “launching pad” team:

• Compiler
• Crates.io
• Dev tools
• Infrastructure
• Language
• Launching Pad
• Library
• Moderation
• Release

This list is not an optimal set of top-level teams. This RFC recommends that the first order of business of the Council be to go through existing governance structures and ensure that all structures have representation either directly or indirectly through one or more top-level teams as well as ensure that all top-level teams sufficiently meet the criteria for being considered a top-level team. This will involve modifying the set of top-level teams.

The “launching pad” top-level team

This RFC establishes the “launching pad” team to temporarily accept subteams that otherwise do not have a top-level team to slot underneath of. This ensures that all teams have representation on the Council, while more permanent parent teams are found or established.

The “launching pad” team is an umbrella team: it has no direct members, only subteam representatives.

The Council should work to find or create a more appropriate parent for each subteam of the “launching pad”, and subsequently move those subteams to their new parent team.

In some cases, an appropriate parent team may exist but not yet be ready to accept subteams; the launching pad can serve as an interim home in such cases.

The launching pad also serves as a default home for subteams of a team that’s removed or reorganized away, if that removal or reorganization does not explicitly place those subteams somewhere else in the organization.

The Council must review subteam membership in the “launching pad” every 6 months to ensure that proper progress is being made on finding all subteams new parent teams. As with other top-level teams, the “launching pad” team can be retired (and have its representation within the Council removed) if the Council finds it to be no longer necessary. The process for retiring the “launching pad” team is the same as with other top-level teams. Alternatively, the Council is free to give the “launching pad” team its own purview, but doing so is out of scope for this RFC.

Removing top-level teams

Any decision to remove a team’s top-level designation (or otherwise affect eligibility for the Council) requires the consent of all Council representatives, with the exception of the representative of the top-level team being removed. Despite this caveat, the representative of the team under consideration must be invited to Council deliberations concerning the team’s removal, and the Council should only remove a team over their objections in extreme cases.

The Council cannot remove the moderation team. The Council cannot change the moderation team’s purview without the agreement of the moderation team.

Alternates and forgoing representation

A representative may end their term early if necessary, such as due to changes in their availability or circumstances. The respective top-level team must then begin selecting a new representative. The role of representative is a volunteer position. No one is obligated to fill that role, and no team is permitted to make serving as a representative a necessary obligation of membership in a team. However, a representative is obligated to fulfill the duties of the position of representative, or resign that position.

A top-level team may decide to temporarily relinquish their representation, such as if the team is temporarily understaffed and they have no willing representative. However, if the team does not designate a Council representative, they forgo their right to actively participate in decision-making at a Project-wide level. All Council procedures including decision-making should not be blocked due to this omission. The Council is still obligated to consider new information and objections from all Project members. However, the Council is not obligated to block decisions to specially consider or collate a non-represented team’s feedback.

Sending a representative to the Council is considered a duty of a top-level team, and not being able to regularly do so means the team is not fulfilling its duties. However, a Council representative does not relinquish their role in cases of short absence due to temporary illness, vacation, etc.

A top-level team can designate an alternate representative to serve in the event their primary representative is unavailable. This alternate assumes the full role of Council representative until the return of the primary representative. Alternate representatives do not regularly attend meetings when the primary representative is present (to avoid doubling the number of attendees).

If a team’s representative and any alternates fail to participate in any Council proceedings for 3 consecutive weeks, the team’s representative ceases to count towards the decision-making quorum requirements of the Council until the team can provide a representative able to participate. The Council must notify the team of this before it takes effect. If a team wishes to ensure the Council does not make decisions without their input or without an ability for objections to be made on their behalf, they should ensure they have an alternate representative available.

A top-level team may change their representative before the end of their term, if necessary. However, as maintaining continuity incurs overhead, teams should avoid changing their representatives more than necessary. Teams have the primary responsibility for briefing their representative and alternates on team-specific issues or positions they wish to handle on an ongoing basis. The Council and team share the responsibilities of maintaining continuity for ongoing issues within the Council, and of providing context to alternates and other new representatives.

For private matters, the Council should exercise discretion on informing alternates, to avoid spreading private information unnecessarily; the Council can brief alternates if they need to step in.

Term limits

Council representatives’ terms are one year in length. Each representative has a soft limit of three consecutive full terms for any given representative delegation (the delegation from a particular top-level team). A representative may exceed this soft limit if and only if the Council receives explicit confirmation from the respective team that they are unable to produce a different team member as a representative (for example, due to lack of a willing alternative candidate, or due to team members having blocking objections to any other candidate).

Beyond this, there is no hard limit on the number of terms a representative can serve for other top-level teams or non-consecutive terms for a single top-level team. Teams should strive for a balance between continuity of experience and rotating representatives to provide multiple people with such experience.⁷

Half of the representative appointments shall happen at the end of March while half shall happen at the end of September. This avoids changing all Council representatives at the same time. For the initial Council, and anytime the set of top-level teams is changed, the Council and top-level teams should work together to keep term end-dates roughly evenly divided between March and September. However, each term should last for a minimum of 6 months (temporary imbalance is acceptable to avoid excessively short terms).

If the Council and top-level teams cannot agree on appropriate term end-date changes, representatives are randomly assigned to one or the other end date (at least 6 months out) to maintain balance.

Limits on representatives from a single company/entity

Council representatives must not disproportionately come from any one company, legal entity, or closely related set of legal entities, to avoid impropriety or the appearance of impropriety. If the Council has 5 or fewer representatives, no more than 1 representative may have any given affiliation; if the Council has 6 or more representatives, no more than 2 representatives may have any given affiliation.

Closely related legal entities include branches/divisions/subsidiaries of the same entity, entities connected through substantial ownership interests, or similar. The Council may make a judgment call in unusual cases, taking care to avoid conflicts of interest in that decision.

A Council representative is affiliated with a company or other legal entity if they derive a substantive fraction of their income from that entity (such as from an employer, client, or major sponsor). Representatives must promptly disclose changes in their affiliations.

If this constraint does not hold, whether by a representative changing affiliation, top-level teams appointing new representatives, or the Council size changing, restore the constraint as follows:

• Representatives with the same affiliation may first attempt to resolve the issue amongst themselves, such that a representative voluntarily steps down and their team appoints someone else.
  • This must be a decision by the representative, not their affiliated entity; it is considered improper for the affiliated entity to influence this decision.
  • Representatives have equal standing in such a discussion; factors such as seniority in the Project or the Council must not be used to pressure people.
• If the representatives with that affiliation cannot agree, one such representative is removed at random. (If the constraint still does not hold, the remaining representatives may again attempt to resolve the issue amongst themselves before repeating this.) This is likely to produce suboptimal results; a voluntary solution will typically be preferable.
• While a team should immediately begin the process of selecting a successor, the team’s existing representative may continue to serve up to 3 months of their remaining term.
• The existing representative should coordinate the transition with the incoming representative but it is the team’s choice which one is an actual representative during the up to 3 month window. There is only ever one representative from the top-level team.

Candidate criteria

The following are criteria for deciding ideal candidates. These are similar to but not the same as the criteria for an effective team lead or co-lead. While a team lead might also make a good Council representative, serving as a team lead and serving as a Council representative both require a substantial time investment, which likely motivates dividing those roles among different people. The criteria are not hard requirements but can be used for determining who is best positioned to be a team’s representative. In short, the representative should have:

• sufficient time and energy to dedicate to the needs of the Council.
• an interest in helping with the topics of Project operations and Project governance.
• broad awareness of the needs of the Project outside of their teams or areas of active contribution.
• a keen sense of the needs of their team.
• the temperament and ability to represent and center the needs of others above any personal agenda.
• ability and willingness to represent all viewpoints from their team, not just a subset, and not just those they agree with.

While some teams may not currently have an abundance of candidates who fit this criteria, the Council should actively foster such skills within the larger Project, as these are helpful not only for Council membership but across the entire Project.

Relationship to the core team

The Leadership Council serves as the successor to the core team in all capacities. This RFC was developed with the participation and experience of the core team members, and the Council should continue seeking such input and institutional memory when possible, especially while ramping up.

External entities or processes may have references to “the Rust core team” in various capacities. The Council doesn’t use the term “core team”, but the Council will serve in that capacity for the purposes of any such external references.

The core team currently has access to credentials for various Project accounts, in addition to the infrastructure team. As the Council is not expected to need these credentials, they will not be transferred from the core team into Council ownership, instead residing solely with the infrastructure team⁸. The infrastructure team’s responsibilities include ensuring teams have the tools and access needed to do their work effectively, while balancing against security and maintainability of our infrastructure. The Council can help coordinate which teams should have access through policy.

Relationship to the Rust Foundation

The Council is responsible for establishing the process for selecting Project directors. The Project directors are the mechanism by which the Rust Project’s interests are reflected on the Rust Foundation board.

The Council delegates a purview to the Project directors to represent the Project’s interests on the Foundation Board and to make certain decisions on Foundation-related matters. The exact boundaries of that purview are out of scope for this RFC.

The Council’s decision-making process

The Leadership Council make decisions of two different types: operational decisions and policy decisions. Certain considerations may be placed on a given decision depending on its classification. However, by default, the Council will use a consent decision-making process for all decisions regardless of classification.

Operational vs policy decisions

Operational decisions are made on a daily basis by the Council to carry out their aims, including regular actions taking place outside of meetings (based on established policy). Policy decisions provide general reusable patterns or frameworks, meant to frame, guide, and support operations. In particular, policy decisions can provide partial automation for operational decisions or other aspects of operations. The council defaults to the consent decision making process for all decisions unless otherwise specified in this RFC or other policy.

This RFC does not attempt to precisely define which decisions are operations versus policy; rather, they fall somewhere along a continuum. The purpose of this distinction is not to direct or constrain the council’s decision-making procedures. Instead, this distinction provides guidance to the Council, and clarifies how the Council intends to record, review, and refine its decisions over time. For the purposes of any requirements or guidance associated with the operational/policy classification, anything not labeled as either operational or policy in this or future policy defaults to policy.

Repetition and exceptions

Policy decisions often systematically address what might otherwise require repeated operational decisions. The Council should strive to recognize when repeated operational decisions indicate the need for a policy decision, or a policy change. In particular, the Council should avoid allowing repeated operational decisions to constitute de facto policy.

Exceptions to existing policy cannot be made via an operational decision unless such exceptions are explicitly allowed in said policy. Avoiding ad-hoc exceptions helps avoid “normalization of deviance”.

The consent decision-making process

The Council will initially be created with a single process for determining agreement to a proposal. It is however expected that the Council will add additional processes to its toolbox soon after creation.

Consent means that no representative’s requirements (and thus those of the top-level team and subteams they represent) can be disregarded. The Council hears all relevant input and sets a good foundation for working together equitably with all voices weighted equally.

The Council uses consent decision-making where instead of being asked “do you agree?”, representatives are asked “do you object?”. This eliminates “pocket vetoes” where people have fully reviewed a proposal but decide against approving it without giving clear feedback as to the reason. Concerns, feedback, preferences, and other less critical forms of feedback do not prevent making a decision, but should still be considered for incorporation earlier in drafting and discussion. Objections, representing an unmet requirement or need, must be considered and resolved to proceed with a decision.

Approval criteria

The consent decision-making process has the following approval criteria:

• Posting the proposal in one of the Leadership Council’s designated communication spaces (a meeting or a specific channel).
• Having confirmation that at least N-2 Council representatives (where N is the total number of Council representatives) have fully reviewed the final proposal and give their consent.
• Having no outstanding explicit objections from any Council representative.
• Providing a minimum 10 days for feedback.

The approval criteria provides a quorum mechanism, as well as sufficient time for representatives to have seen the proposal. Allowing for two non-signoffs is an acknowledgement of the volunteer nature of the Project, based on experience balancing the speed of decisions with the amount of confirmation needed for consent and non-objection; this assumes that those representatives have had time to object if they wished to do so. (This is modeled after the process used today for approval of RFCs.)

The decision-making process can end at any time if the representative proposing it decides to retract their proposal. Another representative can always adopt a proposal to keep it alive.

If conflicts of interest result in the Council being unable to meet the N-2 quorum for a decision, the Council cannot make that decision unless it follows the process documented in the “Conflicts of interest” section for how a decision may proceed with conflicts documented. In such a case, the Council should consider appropriate processes and policies to avoid future recurrences of a similar conflict.

Modifying and tuning the decision-making process

Using the public policy process, the Council can establish different decision-making processes for classes of decisions.

For example, the Council will almost certainly also want a mechanism for quick decision-making on a subset of operational decisions, without having to wait for all representatives to affirmatively respond. This RFC doesn’t define such a mechanism, but recommends that the Council develop one as one of its first actions.

When deciding on which decision-making process to adopt for a particular class of decision, the Council balances the need for quick decisions with the importance of confidence in full alignment. Consent decision-making processes fall on the following spectrum:

• Consensus decision making (prioritizes confidence in full alignment at the expense of quick decision making): team members must review and prefer the proposal over all others, any team members may raise a blocking objection
• Consent decision making (default for the Council, balances quick decisions and confidence in alignment): team members must review and may raise a blocking objection
• One second and no objections (prioritizes quick decision making at the expense of confidence in alignment): one team member must review and support, any team member may raise a blocking objection

Any policy that defines decision-making processes must at a minimum address where the proposal may be posted, quorum requirements, number of reviews required, and minimum time delay for feedback. A lack of objections is part of the approval criteria for all decision-making processes.

If conflicts of interest prevent more than a third of the Council from participating in a decision, the Council cannot make that decision unless it follows the process documented in the “Conflicts of interest” section for how a decision may proceed with conflicts documented. (This is true regardless of any other quorum requirements for the decision-making process in use.) In such a case, the Council should consider appropriate processes and policies to avoid future recurrences of a similar conflict.

The Council may also delegate subsets of its own decision-making purviews via a public policy decision, to teams, other governance structures, or roles created and filled by the Council, such as operational lead, meeting facilitator, or scribe/secretary.

Note that the Council may delegate the drafting of a proposal without necessarily delegating the decision to approve that proposal. This may be necessary in cases of Project-wide policy that intersects the purviews of many teams, or falls outside the purview of any team. This may also help when bootstrapping a new team incrementally.

Agenda and backlog

The Council’s agenda and backlog are the primary interface through which the Council tracks and gives progress updates on issues raised by Project members throughout the Project.

To aid in the fairness and effectiveness of the agenda and backlog, the Council must:

• Use a tool that allows Project members to submit requests to the Council and to receive updates on those requests.
• Use a transparent and inclusive process for deciding on the priorities and goals for the upcoming period. This must involve regular check-ins and feedback from all representatives.
• Strive to maintain a balance between long-term strategic goals and short-term needs in the backlog and on the agenda.
• Be flexible and adaptable and be willing to adjust the backlog and agenda as needed in response to changing circumstances or priorities.
• Regularly review and update the backlog to ensure that it accurately reflects the current priorities and goals of the Council.
• Follow a clear and consistent process for moving items from the backlog to the agenda, such as delegating responsibility to roles (e.g. meeting facilitator and scribe), and consenting to the agenda at the start of meetings. Any agenda items rejected during the consent process must have their objections documented in the published meeting minutes of the Council.

Deadlock resolution

In some situations the Council might need to make an decision urgently and not feel it can construct a proposal in that time that everyone will consent to. In such cases, if everyone agrees that a timely decision they disagree with would be a better outcome than no timely decision at all, the Council may use an alternative decision-making method to attempt to resolve the deadlock. The alternative process is informal, and the council members must still re-affirm their consent to the outcome through the existing decision making process. Council members may still raise objections at any time.

For example, the Council can consent to a vote, then once the vote is complete all of the council members would consent to whatever decision the vote arrived to. The Council should strive to document the perceived advantages and disadvantages for choosing a particular alternative decision-making model.

There is, by design, no mandatory mechanism for deadlock resolution. If the representatives do not all consent to making a decision even if they don’t prefer the outcome of that decision, or if any representative feels it is still possible to produce a proposal that will garner the Council’s consent, they may always maintain their objections.

If a representative withdraws an objection, or consents to a decision they do not fully agree with (whether as a result of an alternative decision-making process or otherwise), the Council should schedule an evaluation or consider shortening the time until an already scheduled evaluation, and should establish a means of measuring/evaluating the concerns voiced. The results of this review are intended to determine whether the Council should consider changing its prior decision.

Feedback and evaluation

All policy decisions should have an evaluation date as part of the policy. Initial evaluation periods should be shorter in duration than subsequent evaluation periods. The length of evaluation periods should be adjusted based on the needs of the situation. Policies that seem to be working well and require few changes should be extended so less time is spent on unnecessary reviews. Policies that have been recently adjusted or called into question should have shortened evaluation periods to ensure they’re iterating towards stability more quickly. The Council should establish standardized periods for classes of policy to use as defaults when determining periods for new policy. For instance, roles could have an evaluation date of 3 months initially then 1 year thereafter, while general policy could default to 6 months initially and 2 years thereafter.

• New policy decisions can always modify or replace existing policies.
• Policy decisions must be published in a central location, with version history.
• Modifications to the active policy docs should include or link to relevant context for the policy decision, rather than expecting people to find that context later.

Transparency and oversight for decision making

Decisions made by the Leadership Council will necessarily require varying levels of transparency and oversight based on the kind of decision being made. This section gives guidance on how the Council will seek oversight for its decisions, and what qualifies decisions to be made in private or in public.

This RFC places certain decisions into each category. All decisions not specifically enumerated must use the public policy process. The Council may evolve the categorization through the public policy process.

Decisions made by the Council fall into one of three categories, based on the level of oversight possible and necessary:

• Decisions that the Council may make internally
• Decisions that the Council must necessarily make privately
• Decisions that the Council must make via public proposal

Decisions that the Council may make internally

Some types of operational decisions can be made internally by the Council, with the provision that the Council has a mechanism for community feedback on the decision after it has been made.

Adding a new decision to the list of decisions the Council can make internally requires a public policy decision. Any decisions that impact the structure, decision-makers, or oversight of the Council itself should not be added to this list.

The Council should also strive to avoid establishing de facto unwritten policy via repeated internal decisions in an effort to avoid public proposal. See “Repetition and exceptions” for more details.

This list exhaustively enumerates the set of decisions that the Council may make internally:

• Deciding to start a process that itself will play out in public (e.g. “let’s start developing and posting the survey”, “let’s draft an RFC for this future public decision”).
• Expressing and communicating an official position statement of the Rust Project.
• Expressing and communicating the position of the Rust Project directly to another entity, such as the Rust Foundation.
• Communicating via Rust Project communication resources (via the blog or all@).
• Making most operational decisions about the Council’s own internal processes, including how the Council coordinates, the platforms it uses to communicate, where and when it meets, templates used for making and recording decisions (subject to requirements elsewhere in this RFC).
• Appointing officers or temporary roles within the Council, for purposes such as leading/facilitating meetings, recording and publishing minutes, obtaining and collating feedback from various parties, etc.⁹ Note that any such roles (titles, duties, and current holders) must be publicly disclosed and documented.
• Inviting specific attendees other than Council representatives to specific Council meetings or discussions, or holding a meeting open to the broader community. (In particular, the Council is encouraged to invite stakeholders of a particular decision to meetings or discussions where said decision is to be discussed.)
• Making decisions requested by one or more teams that would be within the normal purviews of those teams to make without a public proposal. (Note that teams can ask for Council input without requesting a Council decision.)
• Making one-off judgment calls in areas where the purviews of teams overlap or are ambiguous (though changing the purviews of those teams must be a public policy decision).
• Any decision that this RFC or future Council policy specifies as an operational decision.

See the accountability section for details on the feedback mechanism for Council decisions.

Decisions that the Council must necessarily make privately

Some decisions necessarily involve private details of individuals or other entities, and making these details public would have a negative impact both on those individuals or entities (e.g. safety) and on the Project (eroding trust).

This additional constraint should be considered an exceptional case. This does not permit making decisions that would require a public proposal per the next section. However, this does permit decisions that the Council makes internally to be kept private, without full information provided for public oversight.

The Council may also decline to make a decision privately, such as if the Council considers the matter outside their purview (and chooses to defer to another team) or believes the matter should be handled publicly. However, even in such a case, the Council still cannot publicly reveal information shared with it in confidence (since otherwise the Council would not be trusted to receive such information). Obvious exceptions exist for imminent threats to safety.

Private decisions must not establish policy. The Council should also strive to avoid establishing de facto unwritten policy via repeated private decisions in an effort to avoid public proposal. See “Repetition and exceptions” for more details.

This list exhaustively enumerates the set of decisions that the Council may make either partly or entirely in private:

• Determining relationships with new industry / Open Source initiatives, that require confidentiality before launching.
• Discussing the personal aspects of a dispute between teams that involves some interpersonal dynamics/conflicts.
• Participating in contract negotiations on behalf of the Project with third parties (e.g. accepting resources provided to the Project).
• Decisions touching on Project-relevant controversial aspects of politics, personal safety, or other topics in which people may not be safe speaking freely in public.
• Discussing whether and why a team or individual needs help and support, which may touch on personal matters.
• Any decision that this RFC or future Council policy specifies as a private decision.

The Council may pull in members of other teams for private discussions leading to either a private or public decision, unless doing so would more broadly expose private information disclosed to the Council without permission. When possible, the Council should attempt to pull in people or teams affected by a decision. This also provides additional oversight.

Some matters may not be fit for full public disclosure while still being fine to share in smaller, more trusted circles (such as with all Project members, with team leads, or with involved/affected parties). The Council should strive to share information with the largest appropriate audiences for that information.

The Council may decide to withhold new decisions or aspects of decisions when it’s unclear whether the information is sensitive. However, as time progresses and it becomes clearer who the appropriate audience is or that the appropriate audience has expanded, the council should revisit its information-sharing decisions.

The Council should always loop in the moderation team for matters involving interpersonal conflict/dispute, both because such matters are the purview of the moderation team, and to again provide additional oversight.

The council should evaluate which portions of a decision or its related discussions necessarily need to be private, and should consider whether it can feasibly make non-sensitive portions public, rather than keeping an entire matter private just because one portion of it needs to be. This may include the existence of the discussion, or the general topic, if those details are not themselves sensitive.

Private matters may potentially be able to become public, or partially public, at a later date if they’re no longer sensitive. However, some matters may potentially never be able to become public, which means they will never become subject to broader review and oversight. Thus, the Council must exercise caution and prudence before making a private decision.

The Council should make every effort to not make private decisions. The Council should have appropriate additional processes in place to encourage representatives to collectively review such decisions and consider their necessity.

Decisions that the Council must make via public proposal

Decisions in this category require the Council to publicly seek feedback from the broader Rust Project in advance of the decision being made. Such decisions are proposed and decided via the appropriate public decision process, currently the RFC process (though the Council may adopt a different public proposal process in the future). The public decision process must require the consent of representatives (either affirmatively or via non-objection), must allow for blocking objections by Council representatives, must provide reasonable time for public evaluation and discussion, and must provide a clear path for public feedback to the Council.

Following the existing RFC process, public proposals must have a minimum time-delay for feedback before the decision takes effect. Any representative may request that the feedback period for a particular decision is extended to at most 20 days total. The Council may make an internal operational decision to extend the feedback period beyond 20 days. The time-delay for feedback starts only when the necessary threshold for approval is otherwise met, including there not being any raised objections. If objections are raised and resolved during the time-delay, the waiting period starts again.

The Leadership Council is expected to evolve over time to meet the evolving needs of the teams, the Rust Project, and the community. Such evolutionary changes may be small or large in scope and require corresponding amounts of oversight. Changes that materially impact the shape of the Council would need to be part of a public decision process.

As an exception to the above, modifications or removals of a single top-level team (other than the moderation team) may occur with the unanimous agreement of the Council absent the representative delegated by that top-level team.

The Council is permitted to have private discussions even on something that ultimately ends up as a public proposal or a publicly disclosed internal decision. The Council may wish to do this if the discussions are sensitive to allow decision participants to speak more frankly and freely. Additionally, in some cases, private information that can’t be disclosed may impact an otherwise public decision/proposal; the Council should strive to be as transparent and non-misleading as possible and avoid having opaque decisions where all rationale is private.

Note that all decisions fall into this category unless explicitly designated (via this RFC or future public proposals) to fall into another category, so this list (unlike those in the other two categories) is intentionally vague/broad: it is intended to give guidance on what likely should belong in this category without necessarily being prescriptive.

• Any decision that has the effect of modifying the list of decision-makers on the Leadership Council or the decision-making process of the Leadership Council. For instance:
  • Changing this list (or this RFC in general).
  • Modifying the publication and approval process used for the Council’s public proposals. Such a proposal must use the existing established process, not the proposed process.
  • Adding, modifying, or removing policies affecting eligibility for Council representatives.
  • Adding, modifying, or removing one or more top-level teams. This includes:
    • modifying the purview of a top-level team to such an extent that it meaningfully becomes a different team.
    • reorganizing the Project such that top-level teams move underneath other teams.
  • Adding other types of Council representatives other than those delegated by top-level teams.
  • Adding, modifying, or removing policies regarding Council quorums or the locations in which binding decisions can be made.
• Any policy decision, as opposed to a one-off operational decision. (See the decision-making section for details on policy decisions versus operational decisions.) This includes any decision that binds the decisions of other parts of the Project (e.g. other teams or individuals), effectively serving as an exception to the normal purviews of all teams. Some examples of policy decisions:
  • Modifying or extending existing policies, including those previously made via RFC.
  • A legal/licensing policy affecting Rust Project software or other work of the Rust Project.
  • A change to the Code of Conduct.
  • A policy affecting eligibility for membership in the Rust Project or any team thereof.
  • A change to how the moderation team moderates Council representatives or the Leadership Council as a whole. Such decisions must be made jointly with the moderation team.
  • An agreement with another project or organization that makes any ongoing commitments on behalf of the Rust Project. (One-off commitments involving teams that have agreed to those commitments are fine.)
  • Creating or substantially modifying legal structures (e.g. additional Foundations, changing relationship with the Rust Foundation, partnering with other legal entities).
  • Making policy decisions requested by one or more teams that would be within the normal purviews of those teams. (Note that teams can ask for Council input without requesting a Council decision.)
  • Deciding that a class of future decisions always belongs within the Council, rather than being delegated to any other team.
• Any decision that this RFC or future Council policy specifies as a public policy decision.

Conflicts of interest

A Council representative must not take part in or influence a decision in which they have a conflict of interest.

Potential sources of conflicts of interest include, but are not limited to:

• Personal: a decision about themselves
• Financial: a decision with any substantive financial impact on the representative
• Employment or equivalent: a decision involves another person at the same company, or would benefit/harm that company disproportionately more than others
• Professional or other affiliation: a decision involves an organization the representative is associated with, such as an industry/professional/standards/governmental organization
• Familial/Friendship: a decision about a person the representative cannot be expected to be impartial about, including a conflict of interest of another type through that person (such as a family member’s business)

Council representatives must promptly disclose conflicts of interest and recuse themselves from affected decisions. Council representatives must also proactively disclose likely sources of potential conflict annually to other representatives and to the moderation team.

Note that conflicts of interest can arise even if a proposal does not name a specific entity. Council representatives cannot, for instance, use their position to tailor requirements in a proposal to disproportionately benefit their employer.

A proposal favored widely across the Rust community does not automatically represent a conflict of interest for a representative merely because that representative’s employer or equivalent also favors the general area of that proposal, as long as the proposal does not favor any particular entities. For example, a proposal to improve the security of a particular Rust component is not a conflict of interest for representatives just because their employers generally care about Rust security; however, a proposal to engage specific developers or security experts, or one’s compensation being predicated on such a proposal, might still raise a conflict.

The Council may not waive a conflict of interest if one applies, even if the Council considers it minor. However, the Council may evaluate whether a conflict exists at all. Council representatives must raise potential conflicts so that the Council can make such a determination.

The Council may request specific information from a recused representative, and the recused representative may provide that information upon request.

Where possible and practical, the Council should separate decisions to reduce the scope of a conflict of interest. For instance, the Council could separate a decision to arrange access to a class of hardware (without setting specific requirements or selecting vendors) from the decision of which exact hardware to purchase and where to purchase it, if doing so made a conflict of interest only apply to the latter decision.

A representative simultaneously considering the interests of the Rust Project and the interests of any Project team is not necessarily a conflict of interest. In particular, representatives are expected to regularly take part in decisions involving their teams, as delegates from those teams.

In the unlikely event that a proposed decision produces a conflict of interest with enough representatives that the remainder cannot meet a previously established quorum requirement, and the decision must still be made, then either top-level teams must provide alternate representatives for the purposes of the specific decision, or (for public decisions only) the Council may elect to proceed with the decision while publicly documenting all conflicts of interest. (Note that proceeding with a public decision, even with conflicts documented, does not actually eliminate the conflicts or prevent them from influencing the decision; it only allows the public to judge whether the conflicts might have influenced the decision. Eliminating the conflicts entirely is always preferable.) In such a case, the Council should consider appropriate processes and policies to avoid future recurrences of a similar conflict.

Determining and changing team purviews

The Council can move an area or activity between the purviews of top-level teams either already existing or newly created (other than the moderation team). Though the purview of a given top-level team may be further sub-divided by that team, the Council only moves or adjusts top-level purviews. If a sub-divided purview is moved, the Council will work with the involved teams to coordinate the appropriate next steps. This mechanism should be used when the Council believes the existing team’s purview is too broad, such that it is not feasible to expect the team to fulfill the full purview under the current structure. However, this should not happen when a team only currently lacks resources to perform part of its duties.

The Council also must approve expansions of a top-level team’s purview, and must be notified of reductions in a top-level team’s purview. This most often happens when a team self-determines that they wish to expand or reduce their purview. This could also happen as part of top-level teams agreeing to adjust purviews between themselves. Council awareness of changes to a purview is necessary, in part, to ensure that the purview can be re-assigned elsewhere or intentionally left unassigned by the Council.

However, teams (individually or jointly) may further delegate their purviews to subteams without approval from the Council. Top-level teams remain accountable for the full purviews assigned to them, even if they delegate (in other words, teams are responsible for ensuring the delegation is successful).

The Council should favor working with teams on alternative strategies prior to shifting purviews between teams, as this is a relatively heavyweight step. It’s also worth noting that one of the use cases for this mechanism is shifting a purview previously delegated to a team that functionally no longer exists (for instance, because no one on the team has time), potentially on a relatively temporary basis until people arrive with the time and ability to re-create that team. This section of the RFC intentionally does not put constraints on the Council for exactly how (or whether) this consultation should happen.

Mechanisms for oversight and accountability

The following are various mechanisms that the Council uses to keep itself and others accountable.

Ensuring the Council is accountable

The Council must publicly ensure that the wider Project and community’s expectations of the Council are consistently being met. This should be done both by adjusting the policies, procedures, and outcomes of the Council as well as education of the Project and community when their expectations are not aligned with the reality.

To achieve this, in addition to rotating representatives and adopting a “public by default” orientation, the Council must regularly (at least on a quarterly basis) provide some sort of widely available public communication on their activities as well as an evaluation of how well the Council is functioning using the list of duties, expectations, and constraints as the criteria for this evaluation.

Each year, the Council must solicit feedback on whether the Council is serving its purpose effectively from all willing and able Project members and openly discuss this feedback in a forum that allows and encourages active participation from all Project members. To do so, the Council and other Project members consult the high-level duties, expectations, and constraints listed in this RFC and any subsequent revisions thereof to determine if the Council is meeting its duties and obligations.

In addition, it is every representative’s individual responsibility to watch for, call out, and refuse to go along with failures to follow this RFC, other Council policies and procedures, or any other aspects of Council accountability. Representatives should strive to actively avoid “diffusion of responsibility”, the phenomenon in which a group of people collectively fail to do something because each individual member (consciously or subconsciously) believes that someone else will do so. The Council may also wish to designate a specific role with the responsibility of handling and monitoring procedural matters, and in particular raising procedural points of order, though others can and should still do so as well.

If any part of the above process comes to the conclusion that the Council is not meeting its obligations, then a plan for how the Council will change to better be able to meet their obligations must be presented as soon as possible. This may require an RFC changing charter or similar, a rotation of representatives, or other substantive changes. Any plan should have concrete measures for how the Council and/or Rust governance as a whole will evolve in light of the previous year’s experience.

Ensuring Council representatives are accountable

Council representatives should participate in regular feedback with each other and with their respective top-level team (the nature of which is outside the scope of this RFC) to reflect on how well they are fulfilling their duties as representatives. The goal of the feedback session is to help representatives better understand how they can better serve the Project. This feedback must be shared with all representatives, all members of the representative’s top-level team, and with the moderation team. This feedback should ask for both what representatives have done well and what they could have done better.

Separately, representatives should also be open to private feedback from their teams and fellow representatives at any time, and should regularly engage in self-reflection about their role and efficacy on the Council.

Artifacts from these feedback processes must never be made public to ensure a safe and open process. The Council should also reflect on and adjust the feedback process if the results do not lead to positive change.

If other members of the Council feel that a Council representative is not collaborating well with the rest of the Council, they should talk to that representative, and if necessary to that representative’s team. Council representatives should bring in moderation/mediation resources as needed to facilitate those conversations. Moderation can help resolve the issue, and/or determine if the issue is actionable and motivates some level of escalation.

While it is out of scope for this RFC to specify how individual teams ensure their representatives are held accountable, we encourage teams to use the above mechanisms as inspiration for their own policies and procedures.

Ensuring teams are accountable

Teams regularly coordinate and cooperate with each other, and have conversations about their needs; under normal circumstances the Council must respect the autonomy of individual teams.

However, the Council serves as a means for teams to jointly hold each other accountable, to one another and to the Project as a whole. The Council can:

• Ask a team to reconsider a decision that failed to take the considerations of other teams or the Project as a whole into consideration.
• Encourage teams to establish processes that more regularly take other teams into consideration.
• Ensure a shared understanding of teams’ purviews.
• Ensure teams are willing and able to fulfill those purviews.
• Establish new teams that split a team’s purview up into more manageable chunks.

The accountability process must not be punitive, and the process must be done with the active collaboration of the teams in question.

In extreme circumstances where teams are willfully choosing to not act in good faith with regards to the wider Project, the Council has the authority to change a team’s purview, move some subset of a team’s purview to another team, or remove a team entirely. This is done through the Council’s regular decision making process. (This does not apply to the moderation team; see the next section for accountability between the Council and moderation team.)

Moderation, disagreements, and conflicts

This section describes the roles of the Leadership Council and the moderation team in helping resolve disagreements and conflicts, as well as the interactions between those teams.

Disagreements and conflicts fall on a spectrum of interpersonal interaction. Disagreements are more factual and/or technical misalignments, while conflicts are more social or relational roadblocks to collaboration. Many interactions might display aspects of both disagreement and conflict. The Council can help with aspects of disagreement, while aspects of conflict are the purview of the moderation team.

This RFC does not specify moderation policy in general, only the portion of it necessary to specify interactions with the Council and the checks and balances between the Council and the moderation team. General moderation policy is out of scope for this RFC.

Much of the work of the Rust Project involves collaboration with other people, all of whom care deeply about their work. It’s normal for people to disagree, and to feel strongly about that disagreement. Disagreement can also be a powerful tool for surfacing and addressing issues, and ideally, people who disagree can collaboratively and (mostly) amicably explore those disagreements without escalating into interpersonal conflicts.

Situations where disagreements and conflicts arise may be complex. Disagreements can escalate into conflicts, and conflicts can de-escalate into disagreements. If the distinction between a disagreement and a conflict is not clear in the situation, or if participants disagree, assume the situation is a conflict.

In the event of a conflict, involved parties should reach out to the moderation team to help resolve the conflict as soon as possible. Time is a critical resource in attempting to resolve a conflict before it gets worse or causes more harm.

Disagreements among teams

Where possible, teams should attempt to resolve disagreements on their own, with assistance from the Council as needed. The Council can make judgment calls to settle disagreements, but teams need to maintain good working relationships with each other to avoid persistent disagreements or escalations into conflicts.

Potential resolution paths for disagreements between teams could include selecting a previously discussed option, devising a new option, deciding whose purview the decision falls in, or deciding that the decision is outside the purviews of both teams and leaving it to the Council to find a new home for that work.

Conflicts involving teams or Project members

Conflicts involving teams or Project members should be brought to the moderation team as soon as possible. The Council can help mitigate the impact of those conflicts on pending/urgent decisions, but the moderation team is responsible for helping with conflicts and interpersonal issues, across teams or otherwise.

Individuals or teams may also voluntarily engage in other processes to address conflicts or interpersonal issues, such as non-binding external mediation. Individuals or teams should keep the moderation team in the loop when doing so, and should seek guidance from the moderation team regarding appropriate resources or approaches for doing so. Individuals or teams must not use resources that would produce a conflict of interest.

Contingent moderators

The moderation team must at all times maintain a publicly documented list of “contingent moderators”, who must be approved by both the moderation team and the Council via internal consent decision. The moderation team and contingent moderation team should both consist of at least three members each. The contingent moderators must be:

• Not part of the current moderation team or the Leadership Council.
• Widely trusted by Rust Project members as jointly determined by the Council and moderation team; this will often mean they’re already part of the Project in some capacity.
• Qualified to do moderation work and audits as jointly determined by the Council and moderation team. More detailed criteria and guidelines will be established by moderation policy, which is out of scope for this RFC.
• Willing to serve as contingent moderators: willing to do audits, and willing to do interim moderation work if the moderation team dissolves or becomes unavailable, until they can appoint new full moderators. (The contingent moderators are not expected to be willing to do moderation work long-term.)
• Willing to stay familiar with moderation policy and procedure to the standards expected of a moderation team member (including any associated training). Contingent moderators should receive the same opportunities for training as the moderation team where possible.

The need for contingent moderators arises in a high-tension situation, and the Project and Council must be prepared to trust them to step into that situation. Choosing people known and trusted by the rest of the Project helps lower tensions in that situation.

Moderation is a high-burnout activity, and individual moderators or the moderation team may find itself wishing to step away from that work. Note that one or more individual moderators may always choose to step down, in which case the moderation team should identify and bring in new moderators to fill any gaps or shortfalls; if the moderation team asks a contingent moderator to become a full moderator, the team should then appoint a new contingent moderator. An individual moderator who stepped down may be selected as a contingent moderator. If the moderation team as a whole becomes simultaneously unavailable (as determined jointly by the Council and contingent moderators via internal consent decision), or chooses to step down simultaneously, the contingent moderators become the interim moderation team and must promptly appoint new contingent moderators and start seeking new full moderators.

As the contingent moderator role does not have any regular required activities outside of exceptional situations, those appointed to that role must have regular check-ins with the moderation team, to reconfirm that they’re still willing to serve in that role, and to avoid a circumstance in which the contingent moderators are abruptly needed and turn out to be unavailable.

Moderation team policies and procedures

The moderation team has a duty to have robust policies and procedures in place. The Council provides oversight and assistance to ensure that the moderation team has those policies and procedures and that they are sufficiently robust.

The Council may provide feedback to the moderation team and the moderation team is required to consider all feedback received. If the Council feels the moderation team has not followed moderation policies and procedures, the Council may require an audit by the contingent moderators. However, the Council may not overrule a moderation decision or policy.

Audits

If any Council member believes a moderation decision (or series of decisions) has not followed the moderation team’s policies and procedures, they should promptly inform the moderation team. The Council and moderation team should then engage with each other, discuss and understand these concerns, and work to address them.

One of the mechanisms this RFC provides for checking the moderation team’s actions in a privacy-preserving manner is an audit mechanism. In any case where any Council member believes moderation team actions have not followed documented policies or procedures, the Council member may decide to initiate the audit process. (In particular, they might do this in response to a report from a community member involved in a moderation situation.) This happens in addition to the above engagement and conversation; it is not a replacement for direct communication between the Council and the moderation team.

In an audit, the contingent moderation team works with the moderation team to establish whether the moderation team followed documented policies and procedures. This mechanism necessarily involves the contingent moderation team using their own judgment to evaluate moderation policy, specific evidence or communications, and corresponding moderation actions or proposed actions. However, this mechanism is not intended to second-guess the actions themselves; the audit mechanism focuses on establishing whether the moderation team is acting according to its established policy and procedures, as well as highlighting unintended negative consequences of the policies and procedures themselves.

The contingent moderators also reach out to the Council to find out any additional context they might need.

Moderation processes and audits both take time, and must be performed with diligence. However, the Council, contingent moderators, and moderation team should all aim to communicate their concerns and expectations to each other in a reasonably timely fashion and maintain open lines of communication.

Contingent moderators must not take part in decisions or audits for which they have a conflict of interest. Contingent moderators must not have access to private information provided to moderation before the contingent moderator was publicly listed as part of the contingent moderation team; this gives people speaking with the moderation team the opportunity to evaluate potential concerns or conflicts of interest.

The discussions with the Council and the contingent moderation team may discover that the moderation team had to make an exception in policy for a particular case, as there was an unexpected condition in policies or that there was contextual information that couldn’t be incorporated in policy. This is an expected scenario that merits additional scrutiny by the contingent moderation team on the rationale for making an exception and the process for deciding the necessity to make an exception, but is not inherently a violation of moderation team responsibilities.

As the audit process and the Council/moderation discussions proceed, the moderation team may decide to alter moderation policies and/or change the outcome of specific moderation decisions or proposed decisions. This is solely a decision for the moderation team to make.

The contingent moderation team must report the results of the audit to the moderation team and the Council for their review. This must not include any details that may reveal private information, either directly or indirectly. Together with the discussions with the moderation team, this should aim to address the concerns of the Council.

Last-resort accountability

The Leadership Council and moderation team each have substantial power within the Rust Project. This RFC provides many tools by which they can work out conflicts. This section outlines the last-resort mechanisms by which those teams can hold each other accountable. This section is written in the hopes that it will never be needed, and that teams will make every possible effort to resolve conflicts without reaching this point.

If the Council believes there is a systemic problem with the moderation team (whether based on an audit report from the contingent moderation team or otherwise), and the Council and moderation team cannot voluntarily come to agreement on how to address the situation, then as a last resort, the Council (by unanimous decision) may simultaneously dissolve itself and the moderation team. The top-level teams must then appoint new representatives to the Council, and the contingent moderation team becomes the new interim moderation team.

Conversely, if the moderation team believes the Council has a systemic problem, and the Council and moderation team cannot voluntarily come to agreement on how to address the situation, then as a last resort, the moderation team (by unanimous decision) may simultaneously dissolve itself and the Council. This process can only be enacted if there are at least three moderation team members. The top-level teams must then appoint new representatives to the Council, and the contingent moderation team becomes the new interim moderation team.

The moderation team’s representative is recused from the decision to dissolve the Council and moderation team to avoid conflicts of interest, though that representative must still step down as well.

The removed representatives and moderators may not serve on either the Council or the moderation team for at least one year.

By default, the new Council and interim moderation team will take responsibility for clearly communicating the transition.

This mechanism is an absolute last resort. It will almost certainly produce suboptimal outcomes, to say the least. If situations escalate to this outcome, many things have gone horribly wrong, and those cleaning up the aftermath should endeavor to prevent it from ever happening again. The indication (by either the moderation team or the Council) that the situation might escalate to this point should be considered a strong signal to come to the table and find a way to do “Something Else which is Not That” to avoid the situation.

Moderation actions involving Project members

The moderation team, in the course of doing moderation work, necessarily requires the ability to take action not just against members of the Rust community but also against members of the Rust Project. Those actions may span the ladder of escalation all the way from a conversation to removal from the Project. This puts the moderation team in a position of power and trust. This RFC seeks to provide appropriate accountability and cross-checks for the moderation team, as well as for the Council.

If the moderation team plans to enact externally visible sanctions against any member of the Rust Project (anything that would create a conspicuous absence, such as removal from a role, or exclusion from participation in a Project space for more than a week), then any party may request that an audit take place by reaching out to either the Council or contingent moderators, and that audit will be automatically granted.

For the first year after the ratification of this RFC, audits are automatically performed even without a request, to ensure the process is functional. After that time, the Council and moderation team will jointly review and decide whether to renew this provision.

When the moderation team sends a warning to a Project member, or sends a notification of moderation action regarding a Project member, that message will mention the option of requesting an audit.

Conflicts regarding Project members should be brought to the moderation team as soon as possible.

Conflicts involving Council representatives

Conflicts involving Council representatives, or alternates, follow the same process as conflicts involving Project members. The moderation team has the same ability to moderate representatives or alternates as any other member of the Project, including the required audit by the contingent moderators for any externally visible sanction. This remains subject to the same accountability mechanisms as for other decisions of the moderation team.

In addition to the range of moderation actions already available, the moderation team may take the following additional actions for representatives or alternates as a near-last resort, as a lesser step on the ladder of escalation than removing a member from the Project entirely. These actions are not generally specific to the Council, and apply to other Rust teams as well.

• The moderation team may decide to remove a representative from the Council. The top-level team represented by that representative should delegate a new representative to serve the remainder of the term, starting immediately.
• The moderation team may decide to prevent a Project member from becoming a Council representative.
• The moderation team and Council (excluding the affected parties) may jointly decide (as a private operational consent decision) to apply other sanctions limiting the representative’s involvement in the Council. (In this scenario, representatives are not excluded if they have a conflict of interest, as the entire Council will have to cooperate to make the sanctions effective. If the conflicts of interest thus prevent applying these partial sanctions, the moderation team always has the option of full sanctions such as removal.)

All of these also trigger a required audit. The Council must also be notified of any moderation actions involving representatives or alternates, or actions directly preventing people from becoming representatives.

Conflicts involving moderation team members

Conflicts involving a member of the moderation team will be handled by the remaining members of the moderation team (minus any with a conflict of interest), together with the contingent moderation team to provide additional oversight. Any member of the moderation or contingent moderation team should confer with the Council if there is a more systemic issue within the moderation team. The contingent moderators must audit this decision and must provide an audit report to the Council and moderation team.

Ratification of this RFC

Since November of 2021 the following group has been acting as de-facto Project leadership: all members of the core team, all members of the moderation team, all Project representatives on the Rust Foundation board, and the leads of the “top-level” teams:

• Compiler
• Crates.io
• Dev tools
• Infrastructure
• Language
• Library
• Moderation (already included above)
• Release

This RFC will be ratified using the standard RFC process, with the approving team being all the members of this de facto leadership group. This group should also raise objections on behalf of other members of the Project; in particular, team leads should solicit feedback from their teams and subteams.

Footnotes